Part 4

Before the dead leave the thingstead near Urd's fountain, something which obliterated the marks of earthly death has happened to those who are judged happy. Pale, cold, mute, and with the marks of the spirits of disease, they left Midgard and started on the Hel-way. They leave the death-Thing full of the warmth of life, with health, with speech, and more robust than they were on earth. The shades have become corporal. When those slain by the sword ride over the Gjoll to Urd's fountain, scarcely a sound is heard under the hoofs of their horses; when they ride away from the fountain over Bifrost, the bridge resounds under the trampling horses. The sagas of the middle ages have preserved, but at the same time demonised, the memory of how Hel's inhabitants were endowed with more than human strength (Grettla, 134, and several other passages).

The life of bliss presupposes health, but also forgetfulness of the earthly sorrows and cares. The heroic poems and the sagas of the middle ages have known that there was a Hades-potion which brings freedom from sorrow and care, without obliterating dear memories or making one forget that which can be remembered without longing or worrying. In the mythology this drink was, as shall be shown, one that produced at the same time vigour of life and the forgetfulness of sorrows.

In Saxo, and in the heroic poems of the Elder Edda, which belong to the Gjukung group of songs, there reappear many mythical details, though they are sometimes taken out of their true connection and put in a light which does not originally belong to them. Among the mythical reminiscences is the Hades-potion.

In his account of King Gorm's and Thorkil's journey to the lower world, Saxo (see No. 46) makes Thorkil warn his travelling companions from tasting the drinks offered them by the prince of the lower world, for the reason that they produce forgetfulness, and make one desire to remain in Gudmund's realm (Book VIII - amissa memoria . . . pocalis abstinendum edocuit).

Guðrúnarkviða in forna 21 places the drinking-horn of the lower world in Grimhild's hands. In connection with later additions, the description of this horn and its contents contains purely mythical and very instructive details in regard to the pharmakon nepenthes of the Teutonic lower world.

Færði mér Grímhildur
full að drekka
svalt og sárlegt,
né eg sakar mundag;
það var um aukið
Urðar magni,
svalköldum sæ
og Sónar dreyra.

Voru í horni
hverskyns stafir
ristnir og roðnir,
ráða eg né máttag,
lyngfiskur langur
lands Haddingja,
ax óskorið,
innleið dýra.

"Grimhild handed me in a filled horn to drink a cool, bitter drink, in order that I might forget my past afflictions. This drink was prepared from Urd's strength, cool-cold sea, and the liquor of Son."
"On the horn were all kinds of staves engraved and painted, which I could not interpret: the Hadding-land's long heath-fish, unharvested ears of grain, and animals' entrances."

The Hadding-land is, as Sv. Egilsson has already pointed out, a paraphrase of the lower world. The paraphrase is based on the mythic account known and mentioned by Saxo in regard to Hadding's journey in Hel's realm (see No. 47).

Heath-fish is a paraphrase of the usual sort for serpent, dragon. Hence a lower-world dragon was engraved on the horn. More than one of the kind has been mentioned already: Nidhogg, who has his abode in Niflhel, and the dragon, which, according to Erik Vidforli's saga, obstructs the way to Odain's-acre. The dragon engraved on the horn is that of the Hadding-land. Hadding-land, on the other hand, does not mean the whole lower world, but the regions of bliss visited by Hadding. Thus the dragon is such an one as Erik Vidforli's saga had in mind. That the author did not himself invent his dragon, but found it in mythic records extant at the time, is demonstrated by Sólarljóð 54, where it is said that an immense subterranean dragon comes flying from the west (Vestan sá eg fljúga Vánar dreka) - the opposite direction of that the shades have to take when they descend into the lower world - and obstruct "the street of the prince of splendour" (glævalds götu). The ruler of splendour is Mimir, the prince of the Glittering Fields (see Nos. 45-51).

The Hadding-land's "unharvested ears of grain" belong to the flora inaccessible to the devastations of frost, the flowers seen by Hadding in the blooming meadows of the world below (see No. 47). The expression refers to the fact that the Hadding-land has not only imperishable flowers and fruits, but also fields of grain which do not require harvesting. Compare herewith what Völuspá 63 says about the Odain's-acre which in the regeneration of the earth rises from the lap of the sea: "unsown shall the fields yield the grain" (munu ósánir akrar vaxa).

Beside the heath-fish and the unharvested ears of grain, there were also seen on the Hadding-land horn innleið dýra. Some interpreters assume that "animal entrails" are meant by this expression; others have translated it with "animal gaps". There is no authority that innleið ever meant entrails, nor could it be so used in a rhetorical-poetical sense, except by a very poor poet. Where we meet with the word it means a way, a way in, in contrast with útleið, a way out. As both Gorm's saga and that of Erik Vidforli use it in regard to animals watching entrances in the lower world this gives the expression its natural interpretation.

So much for the staves risted on the horn. They all refer to the lower world. Now as to the drink which is mixed in this Hades-horn. It consists of three liquids:

Son has already been mentioned above (No. 21) as one of the names of Mimir's fountain, the well of creative power and of poetry. Of Son Eilif Gudrunarson sings that it is enwreathed by bulrushes and is surrounded by a border of meadow on which grows the seed of poetry.

As Urd's strength is a liquid mixed in the horn, nothing else can be meant thereby than the liquid in Urd's fountain, which gives the warmth of life to the world-tree, and gives it strength to resist the cold (see No. 63).

From this it is certain that at least two of the three subterranean fountains made their contributions to the drink. There remains the well Hvergelmir, and the question now is, whether it and the liquid it contains can be recognised as the cool-cold sea. Hvergelmir is, as we know, the mother-fountain of all waters, even of the ocean (see No. 59). That this immense cistern is called a sea is not strange, since also Urd's fountain is so styled (in Völuspá 20 - þeim sæ er und þolli stendur). Hvergelmir is situated under the northern root of the world-tree near the borders of the subterranean realm of the rime-thurses - that is, the powers of frost; and the Elivogar rivers flowing thence formed the ice in Niflheim. Cool (Svöl) is the name of one of the rivers which have their source in Hvergelmir (Grímnismál). Cool-cold sea is therefore the most suitable word with which to designate Hvergelmir when its own name is not to be used.

All those fountains whose liquids are sucked up by the roots of the world-tree, and in its stem blend into the sap which gives the tree imperishable strength of life, are accordingly mixed in the lower-world horn (cp. No. 21).

That Grimhild, a human being dwelling on earth, should have access to and free control of these fountains is, of course, from a mythological standpoint, an absurdity. From the standpoint of the Christian time the absurdity becomes probable. The sacred things and forces of the lower world are then changed into deviltry and arts of magic, which are at the service of witches. So the author of Guðrúnarkviða in forna has regarded the matter. But in his time there was still extant a tradition, or a heathen song, which spoke of the elements of the drink which gave to the dead who had descended to Hel, and were destined for happiness, a higher and more enduring power of life, and also soothed the longing and sorrow which accompanied the recollection of the life on earth, and this tradition was used in the description of Grimhild's drink of forgetfulness.

Magn is the name of the liquid from Urd's fountain, since it magnar, gives strength. The word magna has preserved from the days of heathendom the sense of strengthening in a supernatural manner by magical or superhuman means. Vigfusson (Dict., 408) gives a number of examples of this meaning. In Ynglingasaga 4 Odin "magns" Mimir's head, which is chopped off, in such a manner that it recovers the power of speech. In Sigurdrífumál 12 Odin himself is, as we have seen, called magni, "the one magning," as the highest judge of the lower world, who gives magn to the dead from the Hades-horn.

The author of the second song about Helgi Hundingsbani has known of dýrar veigar, precious liquids, of which those who have gone to Hel partake. The dead Helgi says that when his beloved Sigrun is to share them with him, then it is of no consequence that they have lost earthly joy and kingdoms, and that no one must lament that his breast was tortured with wounds (Helg. Hund., ii. 46). The touching finale of this song, though preserved only in fragments, and no doubt borrowed from a heathen source, shows that the power of the subterranean potion to allay longing and sorrow had its limits. The survivors should mourn over departed loved ones with moderation, and not forget that they are to meet again, for too bitter tears of sorrow fall as a cold dew on the breast of the dead one and penetrate it with pain (str. 45).